Cherished: A Masters and Mercenaries Novella Read online

  She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t ask him. She had to find another way. She couldn’t ask a man who kept three women on his string to escort her to her sister’s wedding. Certainly not when they would be expected to sleep in the same room. His other girlfriends would likely object.

  As if thinking about them conjured one of them up, a slender brunette stepped out of Will’s condo, turning and going up on her toes as Will appeared in the doorway. Great. She got to watch the “good-bye for now, lover” kiss.

  The brunette leaned over and kissed Will’s cheek. “Give it another twenty minutes and it should be ready. I feel better knowing you have dinner. You don’t eat enough.”

  Poor girl. She was obviously in love, and that was a bad place to be when a dude had two other chicks. She realized she probably looked stupid standing there and started to make her way down the hall. She would ignore all of it and get inside and start looking on Craigslist for a date/potential serial killer. She wondered if the serial killer would let her interview him before her attempted murder.

  “Bridget,” Will called out.

  Damn it. It would be rude not to say anything, but then she was kind of known for being rude. She managed to get to her door, but she hadn’t pulled out the key.

  “Bridget.” He barked her name this time and she couldn’t help but respond. The minute he turned that rich, deep baritone on her she was putty.

  She forced a smile on her face and turned to see the happy couple. Will had put an arm around the woman who looked to be maybe twenty years old. Will was in his mid-thirties. Pervert. “Hey, I didn’t see you there.”

  “Sure, you didn’t. Lisa, this is my neighbor, Bridget,” he said.

  Lovely Lisa’s perfect lips quirked up. “Yeah, I think I know who she is.” She stepped away from Will and her perfectly manicured hand came out. “My brother might have mentioned you on more than one occasion.”

  What? “Your brother?”

  “Yep. I am the youngest Daley, and according to my sisters, the most obnoxious, but don’t let that fool you. I’m the smart one. Will there is the dunce of the family.”

  His sisters? She managed to shake the younger woman’s hand but her mind was way too busy counting. “Three sisters?”

  Lisa nodded as they dropped hands. “Yep. Me, Lila, and Laurel. Our mom wasn’t incredibly creative. Well, except when it came to getting her hands on drugs, and then she was brilliant.”

  “Lisa.” It was good to know she wasn’t the only one he used that authoritarian, you’re-a-dumbass voice on.

  He had three sisters and a mom who used drugs? What the hell? She had to know about the sisters. “So you’re his sister?”

  Lisa’s grin widened. “Yes, I might have mentioned that.” She turned back to her brother. “She seems surprised. I think she might have been under the mistaken impression that you have a bunch of girlfriends. She doesn’t know you very well. He’s all about the job, but he’s got tonight off and I brought him a ridiculously good lasagna. It’s more than enough for everyone. Why don’t you stay for dinner?”

  Shit. She felt the walls starting to close in. “Oh, I couldn’t. I have plans.”

  Big plans. She was going to open a bottle of wine and feel sorry for herself and then drunk tweet. It was an exciting night for her.

  Lisa shook her head and suddenly Bridget found herself being dragged into Will’s condo. “Oh, no, you really have to try my lasagna. Will eats like a five-year-old, so I worry he won’t appreciate it. And I brought a wine sure to complement it, but the big guy there told me he only drinks beer. Dude, you’ve been to college and everything. It’s time to upgrade the palate.”

  “You’re a meddlesome thing,” Will said as he entered the condo. He crossed to the bar and uncorked the wine, pouring it into a glass before handing it to Bridget. “You might as well agree. That one tends to get what she wants.”

  Bridget took the glass. It looked like she would need the alcohol. “Well, it’s okay. It might be nice to have a couple of people to talk to.”

  Lisa’s eyes were lit with mischief as she made her way back to the door. “Oh, it’s only Will. I have to leave. I remembered I have a class. Night all. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

  Will walked to the door and let his sister out. “I don’t even want to know what that means.”

  She winked his way and he shut the door behind her.

  And Bridget felt the trap close. She was alone with Will Daley in his very nicely decorated condo. All alone with him and apparently he didn’t have a harem. He had meddlesome sisters and a bad mom. Her curiosity was at war with the deep need to preserve her own dignity. She set the glass down. “Well, I’m sure you have better things to do with your night.”

  The door locked with a decisive click. “As a matter of fact, I don’t. I’m off call and it would be nice to have someone to talk to.” He stared at her for a moment. “Do you hate me so much you can’t even sit down and have dinner with me, Bridget? What did I do to offend you? I would appreciate the chance to make it up to you.”

  Yep. The walls were closing in and the ground was shaking under her feet. She decided to go with complete and utter denial. Besides, it was true. She didn’t hate him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t have a problem with you. I barely know you.”

  His eyes narrowed and she worried she’d fallen into another trap. “Yes, that was my point. You barely know me, but you avoid me at every given opportunity, and that seems strange to me when we have so much in common. We live in the same building and have the same friends.”

  “Lots of people live in the building. I don’t spend a ton of time with any of them. Except Mrs. Magnussen. Somehow she corners me at least once a week and tells me about her grandson in Sweden. I think I might have a date with him.” She’d seen a picture and unlike most Swedes, Olaf was short and deeply unattractive. She was kind of happy there were whole continents between them.

  He crossed to the kitchen and opened the fridge, grabbing a bottle of beer and flipping the top off. “All right. I’ll grant you we live in a time when not everyone knows their neighbors, but then we come to the problem of the club. You have to admit you avoid me at Sanctum. We’ve had what—two whole conversations? I’ve invited you over here for a drink three times now.”

  “I was busy.” She’d been afraid she would walk into a big old orgy. Except the harem consisted of his sisters.

  “You work a lot? I’m going to put together a salad. Romaine or butter lettuce?” He pulled out a big wooden salad bowl.

  Unless she wanted to run out of the condo screaming, she wasn’t sure how she exited at this point. “Romaine, please. And yes. I have to. My income is directly tied to production, so I’m pretty much always working.”

  “Writing? You’re a writer. You type all day?”

  “Among other things. There’s more than writing. There’s promo and social networking and e-mails and dealing with my agent and publishers.” Some days she was lucky to get her word count in.

  He worked efficiently, washing his hands and then tearing the lettuce with a precision and grace that spoke of his profession.

  “So I heard you’re a brain surgeon.” She was utterly fascinated with his hands. She couldn’t stop watching them. He finished the lettuce and then used a knife to cut the cucumbers.

  “I’m a neurosurgeon and Lisa’s insane. She’s the dumb one. I scored near perfect on my SATs. She was several points behind me.”

  He was a freaking brain surgeon with a perfect SAT score. She hopped onto his barstool, utterly unwilling to leave now because she sniffed a good story. “Lisa’s younger than you.”

  “Very observant. What gave it away? The frown lines?” He was ridiculously cute when he grinned. With short, dark hair and emerald eyes, he should have been on the cover of a men’s fitness magazine, but he also had a brain in that pretty head of his. Yes, that really did do something for her.

  “We call those laugh lines where I’m from.�
�� She’d talked about using Botox once and Chris and Serena had a fit. They were her laugh lines, they’d told her. They were lines she’d earned, soft lines that spoke of a good life. Her mother didn’t have a line on her face. She ruthlessly purged them with chemicals and fat from someone else’s ass since there wasn’t any on hers.

  “I like that. Yes, Lisa is ten years younger. Lila is four years younger and Laurel is six. I’m the only boy and significantly older,” he explained.

  “I have a younger sister.” Hey, it was something they had in common.

  “How much younger?”

  “Amy is five years younger. My parents tried for a boy, but they quit after two girls. Well, I think they tried but I could be wrong. Sometimes I’m certain Amy and I were conceived in some weird science experiment.” She’d dreamed of it often. Dreamed that somewhere out there was a loving alien who left her on Earth and she’d been picked up by the wrong traveler. “There are only two of us though. I can’t imagine a family of six.”

  He stopped. “Six?”

  “You and your parents and three sisters.”

  He went back to chopping. He’d moved on to radishes. “No dad in that scenario. I’m pretty sure we all had different fathers.”

  So the sister hadn’t been joking. She could understand bad parents. “Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be. We all survived.”

  She really wanted him to talk more. She suddenly had the realization that she’d viewed him as nothing more than a himbo to fantasize about sexually. He was a man. He had problems and baggage, and they might be more like her own than she could imagine. If his sister had been telling the truth, he’d likely had to raise his younger siblings while his mother had chased her demons. Her parents had been far more interested in power and position than they had been in their daughters. “Your sister was saying something about your mom.”

  There was no way to miss how his muscles tensed. “I don’t like to talk about the past. I would much rather discuss the now. You didn’t like Lisa until you figured out she was my sister. Did you think she was my lover?”

  Heat flashed through her system, and she was sure there was no way she hadn’t flushed like crazy. “How was I supposed to know? They don’t look like you.”

  His hair was dark where they had a lightness, more gold and red to their tones and two were quite petite while the third had a willowy grace to her form that didn’t scream that she was related to the linebacker in front of Bridget. Will was built on big lines. He had to be six three.

  “They? Which one did you think I was sleeping with?” He placed a bowl in front of her. A chuckle huffed from his mouth. “All three? Seriously? You must think I’m far more energetic than I really am. I’m quite lazy. I have a vacation coming up and I’m planning on laying around like a slug.”

  He had time off? That was convenient.

  He refilled her wine glass. Damn. She hadn’t noticed she’d emptied it. “No, I’m not dating anyone.”

  “But you’re looking for a sub.”

  He shrugged again. “Not particularly. I tried that route and it didn’t work out for me.”

  The storyteller in her sensed something juicy. “Then why are you at Sanctum?”

  “Why are you at Sanctum?” Will shot back.

  Because she wanted to find a man like the ones she wrote about. Because she wanted someone who would love her and see past all the crap she put out there to protect herself. “I’m doing some research.”

  Yeah. Crap like that. She was so smart.

  “There you go. We’re both just playing around.”

  She was heading into her mid-thirties and standing alone with the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen. How long was she going to keep this crap up? The wine had already started to work on her. She knew it was dumb, but she was tired of the self-protective shit, sick of always being the tough girl. “I’m not playing. I’m lying.”

  “Lying?”

  “I don’t know. I’m certainly not telling the truth.” Why was it so hard to admit it? “I kind of want to see what it would be like to have a Dom.”

  “Are you serious? Because Mitch told me you’ve been very academic about it.”

  “Yeah, that seems safer than opening myself up. Also, the Doms I’ve worked with haven’t called to me. It’s not that they’re bad. I like Jesse a lot, but he’s strictly a friend, and Mitch seems a little cold to me. I would be all over Alex McKay, but the marriage thing is kind of sacred.”

  “So you don’t do married guys?”

  She didn’t like the hardness in his voice, but she couldn’t quite figure out how to respond beyond the obvious. “No. I guess that would be a hard limit. I don’t date anyone attached to other people. I don’t date a lot at all.”

  He wiped his hands off on a towel and moved around the bar. “I don’t either. Between work and moving, I haven’t had a chance and really, I’m not looking for anything serious.”

  Well, at least he was honest. The one guy she was seriously interested in wasn’t serious at all. Story of her life. She nodded. “Understood.”

  She put the wine glass down.

  “Hey, I’m trying to be honest here, so why do I feel like I just became the bad guy?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all.” It wasn’t like he’d offered himself to her. “I think it’s good to be upfront and open. You know I really should get to work. I didn’t get my word count in today.”

  She was going to make a fool of herself if she stayed much longer. She liked him. She liked how he talked about his sisters. She liked that he could make a salad and kept making sure she had what she needed. It was a recipe for disaster.

  “I thought you were staying for dinner.” He moved in, taking up all the space. This close, she could see that he had a five-o’clock shadow across his perfect jaw. She was a sucker for a square jaw. Damn it. Even his ears were hot. She kind of wanted to lick them to see if he was ticklish there.

  “I think that’s a bad idea.”

  “Because I’m not looking for anything serious?” Will asked. “Does everything have to be serious? Do you go into every relationship looking to get married?”

  “No. I don’t think about getting married much.” Her parents’ marriage was so bad she often couldn’t stomach the idea. “But I’m getting too old to do the one-night stand thing.”

  He moved in closer and she nearly forgot to breathe. He smelled so good. Clean and masculine. Sandalwood. He’d likely washed with it. All over. A vision of him soaping that body made her mouth water. “I didn’t say anything about one-night stands. I said maybe you shouldn’t take every relationship so seriously. Bridget, I want to spend time with you.”

  And her nipples were hard. Yeah, they wanted to spend time with him, but her brain was still in charge. “My sister’s getting married in Hawaii.”

  Oh, her brain was a traitor, too.

  He loomed over her, his body inches away. His lips curled up in the sexiest grin. “Really? That sounds like fun. When is that happening?”

  He was going to kiss her. His lips were going to touch hers and she had the sudden and deep fear that she wouldn’t be the same afterward. Still, she couldn’t quite seem to move, couldn’t get the will worked up to step back. She only managed to run her tongue across her lips to make sure they weren’t bone dry. “Soon. Next week.”

  He sighed, his hands finding her shoulders. “Oh, I guess you’re going to be out of town then. I was hoping to see you while I was on vacation next week.”

  She was mesmerized by his eyes. This close, she could see how green they were. His hands moved to her neck. “You could come with me. I need a date.”

  Now she was kind of happy everyone else had turned her down. It seemed right to ask him, good to be here with him.

  There was the sound of a phone ringing.

  He shook his head as his hands sank into her hair. The way he was taking his time did something for her. The men she’d been with before had all just gone for it and w
ould likely have already been pawing her boobs by now, but Will was moving with languid seduction. It was like a dance. “You need a date?”

  The only thing pulling her out of the sensual haze was that stupid phone. Who had a landline these days? “I do. Shouldn’t you get that?”

  His nose touched hers as his fingers ran along her scalp, sending pleasurable shivers through her body. “Don’t worry about it. The hospital requires I keep a house phone. And a pager. And a cell. If it’s really important, they’ll page me. This is more fun than answering the phone, don’t you think? Bridget, you know I won’t be able to keep my hands off you if we go to Hawaii together.”

  She didn’t want him to. She was fairly certain she was going to fall into bed with him in the next ten minutes. Maybe he was right. Maybe she took everything too seriously and she should have some fun for once in her life. Maybe she could handle it. “Will?”

  His mouth hovered right over hers, and there was no way to mistake the satisfaction coming off him. He wanted her. God, he really wanted her. “Yes, Bridget?”

  “Do you want to come to Hawaii with me? We could have fun.” She would understand that it was temporary. Or maybe it was a way to get to know each other. Maybe to find out if they were compatible.

  “Hey, Will. It’s Mitch. I couldn’t get you on your cell. I wanted to let you know that I talked to Jace and he has agreed to be conveniently unable to travel for the next couple of weeks. That’s the last of them and it should be smooth sailing for you. If Bratty Bridget wants a date, she’s going to have to come to you. According to the report my investigator did on her, there’s no one else she can go to unless she wants to call her loser ex-boyfriend.”

  He reached over and picked up the phone and slammed the receiver back down.

  Bridget froze, the words pouring over her like icy rain.

  She’d spent days going hat in hand to the Doms of Sanctum and she’d never stood a chance. Not with any of them.

  “All right. I’m hoping you view this as something kind of flattering. I mean, I did go to a lot of trouble to make sure I was the last guy standing.” He tried to move back in.